NITA STRAUSS: 'There's A Different Level Of Expectation For A Female Guitar Player'

Nita Strauss, the Los Angeles-based guitar shredder for the ALICE COOPER band, was recently interviewed by Meltdown of Detroit's WRIF 101.1 FM radio station. You can now listen to the chat below.

Asked if she feels like she has to prove herself every time she takes the stage, Nita said: "I feel like that every single time, yeah, of course. A little less lately. It was interesting, growing up, being a female guitar player… I try not to harp too much on the male-female thing, but it is true that there's a different level of expectation for a female guitar player. If there's a guy that's in a band, a regular band of all dudes gets up on stage, no one looks at the guitar player and goes, 'Oh, that guy's not gonna be any good.' It just doesn't happen. But that happened to me for so many years. And literally up until as recently as last month, when I was on tour with Alice Cooper, I was signing autographs for fans after the show by the tour bus, and somebody said, 'My friends all said that wasn't really you playing guitar up there. Was it really you?' I was, like, 'I just did a five-minute guitar solo. How could I fake that?' There's nobody in the world that's good enough to mime that in front of that many people — it's not doable. So it has been a long road, a long proving ground, but I'm happy to say now that it happens a lot less. And now I'm more focused on proving the people that supported me all these years right rather than proving all the doubters wrong."

Nita's debut solo album, "Controlled Chaos", was released on November 16 via Sumerian Records. The disc was fueled by a Kickstarter campaign which generated over 600 percent of what Strauss was hoping to raise to help offset the costs around creating the record and touring it.

Earlier this year, Strauss became the first female to have a signature series guitar with Ibanez. Nita is also the first female to have signature DiMarzio pickups.